Tips For Building a Conversion-Focussed Website For App Downloads

Not least the fact that you’re promoting a product that users buy, or download, on a different site.

How, he asks, can you optimise your website for an off-site conversion goal? Doesn’t this go against all perceived ideas of CRO best-practice? Asking users to complete additional steps in a conversion journey?

The answer to this puzzle, as Patel explains, is simple: Build a normal site.

“You don’t have to do anything different to develop a great app site,” he writes. Since the only difference is that the point of sale is on another domain, there’s no reason to do anything differently.

Patel recommends focussing on SEO (search engine optimisation) and ASO (app store optimisation) to give your app the best possible visibility, as well as creating lots of pages to increase dwell time, and incorporating social signals to show potential customers there’s already an active community of users.

Create landing pages for different stages of the purchase cycle: Somebody who has just discovered your firm isn’t necessarily going to be interested in the same things as a seasoned customer, or convinced prospect. So create different content and offers to appeal to customers at each stage of the purchase cycle.

[We’ll add to this by recommending creating content that reflects the needs and pain points of different buyer personas – you need to consider both approaches to create a great landing page.]

Gate valuable content – Mosconi says you should provide eBooks, whitepapers and the like in return for contact deals to generate more leads.

[Again, we'll put our own two cents in here. Gating content isn't always the best option - there is an argument against gating, where using ebooks and downloads creates a sense of gratitude and ties the user to your company. They will then, the logic goes, naturally come to you first when they are ready to convert. Gating does not work for all - in some cases asking for details too early can put users off. So it's important to find what works for you.]

Include a strong call to action – This is a given for CRO, but it needs saying – a weak call to action that doesn’t tell customers what they’re going to get by signing up can kill an otherwise-great landing page.

Use friendly forms – Obviously you want as much information as you can possibly gain about your leads, but if your forms ask too much of your prospects, you can end up putting them off. Streamline.

Facilitate research – Since B2B offerings are often complex, writes Mosconi, it’s worth including links to other relevant pieces of content to help facilitate the research process.

Use trust-building content – Customer testimonials help to build trust in your product – your prospects are more interested in what others have to say about you than your sales patter.

Keep things organised – Your landing page needs to be organised for conversions – every element of the page should be part of one clear, direct conversion flow.

Common Pitfalls With e-Commerce A/B Testing

As Armando Roggio at Practical Ecommerce explains, “A/B [testing] can help ecommerce marketers identify the best landing page design, which form of navigation works best, or even how and where to position page elements”.

But it’s far from a fool-proof process. One small oversight, or misreading of data, can result in bad decision making – and missed opportunities for profit.

Roggio identifies statistical fluctuation in small sample sets, not examining all available data, and testing too many variables as common pitfalls facing e-Commerce conversion experts.